Last month, Rolling Stone published a story titled "A Rape on Campus" by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, which described a brutal gang rape of a woman named Jackie at a University of Virginia fraternity house; the university's failure to respond to this alleged assault – and the school's troubling history of indifference to many other instances of alleged sexual assaults. The story generated worldwide headlines and much soul-searching at UVA. University president Teresa Sullivan promised a full investigation and also to examine the way the school responds to sexual assault allegations.

Because of the sensitive nature of Jackie's story, we decided to honor her request not to contact the man she claimed orchestrated the attack on her nor any of the men she claimed participated in the attack for fear of retaliation against her. In the months Erdely spent reporting the story, Jackie neither said nor did anything that made Erdely, or Rolling Stone's editors and fact-checkers, question Jackie's credibility. Her friends and rape activists on campus strongly supported Jackie's account. She had spoken of the assault in campus forums. We reached out to both the local branch and the national leadership of the fraternity where Jackie said she was attacked. They responded that they couldn't confirm or deny her story but had concerns about the evidence.

In the face of new information, there now appear to be discrepancies in Jackie's account, and we have come to the conclusion that our trust in her was misplaced. We were trying to be sensitive to the unfair shame and humiliation many women feel after a sexual assault and now regret the decision to not contact the alleged assaulters to get their account. We are taking this seriously and apologize to anyone who was affected by the story.

Will Dana
Managing Editor

Lesson here is...when someone makes accusations, make sure it's true? Maybe even Investigate? No one is forcing the reporter or the magazine to publish it, but at least they would know if it's true or not, and they would not be made fools off. This is why respectability in media is out the door.
There has been many dubious claims as of late about rapes, lena dunham's rapist can't be found, no one ever heard of this person.
In Canada, there where accusation made on parliament hill but those making the accusations, did not want to talk about it, give evidence, be identified....
"Believe us because we said so" policy is dangerous, not only for those been accused but also for "real victims". The first thing that will comes to mind when someone claims a rape, "is it true?"
This is the result of "men all bad" policy of those crazy feminists, and the media's pandering to them without question...
The more this type of BS comes out...the more that hate group looses support....